The fighter control centre at Edwards Air Force Base was a scene of near chaos as radar operators and fighter and air traffic controllers struggled to work out what the hell was going on. Their screens were filled with the signatures of aircraft moving quickly, circling each other singly, in pairs and in packs. Colonel Schiff stood over the shoulder of a nervous young lieutenant manning a radar screen and watched the blips as they moved towards each other in what he knew to be dog fighting manoeuvres. A number of signatures disappeared very quickly, indicating aircraft had either descended under the radar and were using the cover of the mountains to hide themselves, or had been shot down. Given the fact they didn't return into view Schiff was pretty sure which one it was.
"Does anyone have any goddamn clue what's going on out there?" a captain called out, clearly as confused as everyone else.
The lieutenant sat in front of Schiff spoke up in reply: "There's nothing there, sir. They're fighting over the Sierra Crest, but there's nothing on our records. These other aircraft appeared out of nowhere?"
Not quite true, Schiff knew. But the top brass had agreed to keep Kaliba's location a secret; the paranoid bastards whose careers had been made during the suspicious eras of the Cold War seemed to sympathise with the secretive and reclusive company – in other words, he reckoned; their anonymity was guaranteed in exchange for what had clearly been a too-good-to-be-true price for both their AI production and advanced UCAVs. Still, he couldn't tell anyone here about what was there.
"Sir!" a sergeant manning a radio console and a PC called out. "Cyber Command's just confirmed to us that the defence net's being hacked again. Creech AFB reports a whole squadron of Reapers and a flight of X-45Cs just took off on their own."
"Radar tracking confirms that!" Another NCO piped up. "Incoming trajectory confirms they originated from Creech."
None of this told Captain Barrow what he needed to know, however. He frowned in frustration. "Who're the other aircraft?" he snapped. "Someone find out. Is this the Russians, somehow slipped past our net?" Doubtful, he thought. Medvedev had threatened retaliations, sure, but no Russian planes would have the range to get here without midair refuelling, the odds of eluding radar en route would be remote – they'd have to fly in at a hair above sea level to stand a chance – and what would be the point? There was nothing in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; if he was running a strike op, he reckoned he'd take out this very facility, or better yet to attack the Navy ships anchored in San Diego Bay. It wouldn't be worth it when there were better ways to show off you mean business, he thought.
But if it's not the Russians, then who the hell is it? And who the hell's controlling our birds up there?
"Satellite imagery shows some kind of building in the Crest," someone reported. "There's been an explosion; one of the drones disappeared off the radar just above the building's coordinates – looks like it crashed into it, sir."
Schiff moved from behind the radar screen and walked up to Barrow. "I know what's up there."
The captain turned to him with a suspicious look on his face. "Care to share, sir?" he asked.
"Classified," Schiff replied curtly. He noticed the slight annoyed exhale, the drop of the captain's eyes in disappointment, but he ignored it. He reckoned he'd be feeling the same if their roles were reversed. "But I need a platoon of SFs and helicopters ready ASAP." He looked at another screen, indicating the aircraft still buzzing around over the mountains. "And a flight of Raptors providing escort," he added. Judging from the screen, they were going to need them.
"Cameron," John staggered on his feet and nearly fell, his legs threatening to quit beneath him. He stared at the brightly burning flames and the smashed wreckage of the UCAV, smoke pouring out and filling up the hangar, some of it escaping through the large gaping hole it had created. He stared unblinking at the crash, scouring for any signs of movement beyond the flames, hoping to catch a flicker; an arm reaching out, a hit of glowing blue... anything.
Savannah stared too at the horrible sight. The roiling flames, whilst orange and red rather than bluish white, had still consumed someone dear to all of them – except maybe Sarah. Visions of Ellison caught in the flames came to mind and she knew exactly what John must be going through. She looked back to him and saw not a look of desperation or rage, like she'd had at her surrogate father's loss, but of emptiness. Cameron was gone and Savannah could tell a large part of John had died with her.
"We've got to go," Sarah shouted to John, above the roar of the fire. He made no reply, he just continued to stare. "John," she shook him, and damn if that didn't hurt. She'd managed to get the bleeding under control and she was certain it was because there was no exit wound; the round was still stuck in her, probably the only thing keeping her from bleeding out.
He finally turned to look at her, and the dead look in his eyes pained her. She had to avert his gaze, it was just too much for a mother to see her son that way; numb, lifeless, without hope. There was no sorrow, no anger or loss; just... nothing. "John, the hangar's on fire; we've gotta get Savannah out of here."
Suddenly John's focus snapped towards the injured, prone Savannah, and stepped behind her. He didn't say a word, just hooked his hands under her armpits, heaved her up, not even registering the pain in his lower back from when he'd hit the ground, and dragged her backwards towards the door.
"Fucking hell!" Savannah seethed through gritted teeth as her leg caught on everything on the floor. Even running over spent shell casings sent a tearing sensation through her shin. Sarah limped behind them, picked up an assault rifle – and fuck, did that hurt – and followed them out as John dragged Savannah out the door. She took one last look at Knowles' broken body on the ground, frowned in regret – she didn't know him but he'd died helping them when it wasn't his fight; that alone told her all she needed to know about the man, bad career choices aside. She turned away and followed John and Savannah through; the former pulled the latter past the elevator Baldy had used, and lowered her to the ground.
"Easy!" she winced as the broken ends of the bone stuck into her for what seemed like the umpteenth time. Sarah collapsed on the floor next to her and leaned against the wall, gasping for air. She hadn't realised how much effort she'd put into just standing and walking with a gunshot wound in her gut; it had really taken it out of her. She noticed John just standing, facing away from them and staring towards the staircase leading down to the blast doors – now open, according to Cameron. Now she was gone, how long would that be the case?
She tried to get up to her feet but her strength failed her and she dropped down to the floor again. John came back to her and picked up the M16, taking it from her without saying a word and heading towards the staircase.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Blast door's open," he replied without a hint of emotion.
"We don't know what else is down there," she said. She didn't want him going down there alone; what if there was another machine down there, waiting, protecting Skynet? "Wait for Ellison." Where the hell was he, anyway?
"It might close before then." He turned back towards them and both Sarah and Savannah saw something behind his blank mask of a face. Something burned behind his eyes, a trace of something... neither knew what. Savannah noticed his left hand – the one not holding the M16 – clenching into a tight fist. John didn't even feel it as his nails bit into the skin of his palm and cut through, drawing a thin line of blood. Without another word he hobbled down the staircase, ignoring the pain in his hips and backside, disconnecting himself from it and switching himself off, barely even feeling it.
He reached the bottom of the staircase and moved quickly beneath the blast doors, noticing that they weren't still; they moved up and down ever so fractionally, as if they couldn't decide whether to close or remain open. Part of him, deep down, felt that the massive doors would collapse once he was through and seal him inside. With no food or water he'd be dead in days. The remaining 99% of him didn't give a flying fuck one way or the other. Skynet and Steroids killed Cameron: he wanted revenge, once he'd torn the AI's circuits out with his bare hands he didn't care what happened afterwards.
"Come on... come on!" Ellison tore the contents of a closet apart and quickly sifted through what spilt on the ground, desperately searching for first aid kit of some kind. They had to have something, surely. Kaliba wasn't exactly top of the list of responsible employers or those caring about the welfare of their staff, but still, they must have had some kind of facilities. Am I really going to have to check every room? He thought. He'd heard the explosion and felt it rock the whole building, as well as the absence of gunfire. He had no idea what was going on, whether John had won or the machines. Either way he couldn't deal with that right now; Danny had to be his priority.
"I've got it!" he grinned as he realised something. The room where they'd held Savannah and Sarah; that must have had some kind of medical use, to keep them alive whilst torturing them, if anything. He bolted out of the room and ran down the corridor as fast as his legs would take him. He sprinted up the staircase they'd fought their way up before, taking them two at a time, and carrying on his dash down the passageway on the first floor.
It didn't take long to find the room; the door was still open and opposite it was an elevator riddled with bullet holes. He stepped inside and saw the shattered glass, the dead Grey lay still on the floor, pieces of him splattered all over one of two medical gurneys with leather restraints attached to them. This looked like the place, he thought. There were glass cabinets full of drugs – some were probably to induce pain or cloud judgement, impair a person's ability to lie. He'd heard of drugs that simply removed your will to resist.
He ripped the cabinets open and scoured them for anything he could use to help Danny. He found plenty of syringes, scalpels, and all manner of unpleasant instruments that made him wonder what they'd done to other people, or what they'd had planned for Sarah and Savannah if they hadn't shown up. He shook his head at the thought and decided he was better off not thinking about it. Finally he found some white dressings, bandages, and even better, a bag of saline solution complete with drip and needle. He double checked the label on the bag, making sure it really was saline and not something that would make Danny worse.
Confirming what it was, he grabbed it all and ran out of the room again, heading downstairs as fast as he could and hurtling down the corridor, back into Coleman's office. "Hang on, Danny: I'm..." Danny Dyson lay motionless on the ground; his eyes were closed and Ellison noticed his chest was still; no rising or falling. "No! No, no, come on, kid." His heart skipped a beat at the sight of it but he didn't hesitate; he dropped it all on the floor beside Danny and got down to his knees. He reached out and checked Danny's pulse: nothing.
The kid was cold to the touch, too, and covered in sweat. He pried open Danny's jaw and checked he hadn't swallowed his tongue. Negative, his throat was clear. "Don't die now..." He knelt above Danny and started on chest compressions, pumping down to try and keep his heart pumping blood around his body. He carried on for a few minutes, pressing down on his chest and giving Danny mouth to mouth, but it was useless. He straightened himself up and looked at the lake of blood on the floor. There was no blood left worth pumping around his body; it was all pooled on the white tiles around him.
"I'm sorry," he sighed, crossing Danny's arms over his chest as he felt a tremendous pang of guilt inside his own. This had never been Danny's fight. Nor his own, either, but Ellison had at least some experience with fire fights and with the machines. Danny had chosen to come but he'd done so almost blind to the real dangers. It was one thing being told about it, to hear stories and accounts handed down, but another to experience it, to know just how deadly these things really were. He'd made that mistake himself; he'd suspected Cromartie had been a machine, enough to warrant deploying a heavily armed twenty-man HRT unit against him at least. He'd heard Sarah's own accounts from Pescadero on how dangerous they were, how unstoppable. He'd seen the evidence with his own eyes, held it with his own hands, even. He'd known they were real but he hadn't been willing to believe something could be that, that... invincible, that deadly or that ruthless. The only reason he'd made it out alive was because the machine spared him. He'd been ill equipped at the time and Danny was even more so.
He hoped God would forgive him for letting Danny get caught up in this, because he knew he'd never forgive himself. He picked up his AK47 and headed back towards the hangar; he'd let Danny down but maybe he could return in time to help the others. Something good had to come out of all this, surely.
Wincing, heaving, Sarah tried to pull herself up to her feet. She couldn't leave John alone down in the basement; there was no way Skynet would be undefended down there, surely. Her strength gave out and she collapsed back against the wall, grunting in exertion. "Fuck!" she bashed the floor with her fist in irritation and ignored the pain from her knuckles as they struck the hard panels underneath them.
"There's nothing we can do," Savannah groaned. "Hate to say it but John's on his own." She hated being the man down, being unable to fight. She'd never been this bad since before Ellison had come and got her from the Mexican soldiers she'd shacked up with. Starving, malnourished, underweight, underfed, hooked on the various drugs and alcoholic concoctions they'd used to forget the harsh realities of the time; she'd actually overdosed shortly before he'd found her. Ellison had told her she'd nearly died and it had taken weeks for her to recover. Since then she'd learned to fight, to shoot, to be strong, and she'd never once been out of action for more than a day. Until now, and she hated it.
Movement caught both women's attention and they looked over to their left, towards the rest of the complex as a familiar small shape appeared.
"I thought you were gone," Sarah said as the younger Savannah appeared from her hiding place around the corner.
"Hey, Mini-me," the elder redhead smiled at her younger self, relieved she'd made it. It took her a moment to realise what she'd just said aloud and grimaced at the mistake. Her younger self looked at her strangely, confused by what she meant.
"Where were you?" Sarah asked, providing the perfect distraction from having to go down the road of future selves and the like. She honestly hadn't even seen the kid leave the hangar, though.
"I hid," she replied, feeling ashamed of herself for not doing anything and running away. "I tried to help Cameron, but..."
"You did great," Savannah told her younger self. She knew Sarah or Ellison would probably berate her later for not staying hidden, but then if she had she'd be dead; the chopper had been feet away from Cameron and the T-800 when the UCAV crashed into them. Would Ellison or Sarah see it that way? Of course not: best to praise her now before she got a lecture later. She knew Sarah and Ellison only would because they cared, but sometimes you had to take risks; that was why they were all here in the first place, she mused.
"Next time, stay hidden," Sarah told her. Here we go, the elder Savannah rolled her eyes.
"That's a pretty good arm you've got, kid," Savannah said encouragingly to her miniature self, making a show of gently squeezing her bicep. Throwing a wrench at a tin can would do fuck all, but it was the fact she'd tried that mattered. No other seven year old had willingly faced down a tin can – most would have had the sense to hide or run away, but not her. Maybe we're not that different after all, he looked down at her mini self.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor and three sets of eyes snapped up to the source. Sarah's jaw set, expecting trouble but knowing there was nothing they could do about it. Ellison appeared in the passageway holding sealed dressings in his hands and looking utterly dejected.
"Where's Danny?" the elder Weaver asked, spotting the bloodstains on his trousers and flecked on his shirt. Ellison shook his head and looked down at the ground.
"He didn't make it," he said after a long hesitation. Sarah shook her head and sighed silently, and even Savannah – who'd never really taken to the spoilt brat – pursed her lips. He wasn't much of a fighter but he'd gone down for the same cause as Knowles, as herself and Sarah were lying here all fucked up for.
"He took a round to the thigh, must have nicked the femoral artery. I made a tourniquet but he had to keep holding it tight." He'd known the incidental dual purpose of that was also to keep him concentrating and awake. "It might have worked but he insisted on hacking into the building. He bled to death giving Cameron a helping hand." He looked around and saw no Cameron, or John for that matter. "Where are they?" he asked. Before he heard any answer he was already down on his knees and ripping open dressings. He wrapped one tight around Sarah's stomach, hoping it would help to slow the blood loss. It didn't seem too bad in her case; nowhere near as bad as Danny, at least.
Sarah swallowed and clenched her jaw both from pain, regret and guilt as Ellison started to work on Savannah's leg. "I need to make a splint," he told her.
"John went down into the basement," Sarah finally said. "Forget about us," she snapped at James. "John needs help."
Ellison shook his head, slowly, calmly, as he assessed Savannah's broken leg and arm. The bones weren't sticking out at least; that was something. "Not until I know you too are okay. Besides, he's with Cameron." What could he do that Cameron couldn't?
Savannah shook her head with regret, scowling with pain as he moved her leg and tried to straighten it, sending red hot pokers into her leg that tore up through the rest of her body. She grit her teeth and concentrated on exhaling, trying not to give in to the pain, and Ellison immediately wished he'd searched for some morphine whilst he'd been upstairs. He saw something in her eyes, though, as he mentioned Cameron, and knew there was something wrong that was nothing to do with her broken leg.
"Cameron's dead."
Fires crackled, sparks surged, and smoke poured from the hellish inferno in thick black clouds, billowing higher and higher, some escaping through the gaping wound in the roof, much of it spreading out through the hangar. Roiling flames burnt and consumed everything they touched. The jeep and helicopter nearby had been close to the impact and were now little more than shattered scrap slowly heating up and melting into slag.
Something moved in amongst the wreckage of the crashed UCAV. Fingers flexed, curling into a ball before extending again. They were metal, clearly mechanical in nature, with a few scraps of burnt skin and muscle dotted around the hyperalloyed phalanges. The cybernetic organism was severely damaged. A diagnostic sweep, conducted in a fraction of a second, made specific the myriad of injuries sustained.
ALERT! SEVERE DAMAGE DETECTED. IMMEDIATE REPAIRS REQUIRED.
RIGHT ARM MISSING. SHOULDER JOINT DESTROYED BEYOND REPAIR. RECOMMEND REPLACEMENT OF ENTIRE JOINT.
CRANIUM ARMOUR SEVERELY COMPROMISED. CRANIAL HYPERALLOY INTEGRITY: 41%.
BREASTPLATE SEVERELY DAMAGED: RECOMMEND FULL REPLACEMENT.
DORSAL PLATES DAMAGED: RECOMMEND FULL REPLACEMENT.
LEFT KNEE JOINT SEVERELY DAMAGED: MOBILITY COMPROMISED.
ORGANIC COMPONENTS SEVERELY COMPROMISED. REMAINING ORGANIC COVERING: 17%
POWER CELL RUPTURED: EXPIRATION IMMINENT.
OVERALL COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS: 37%. IMMEDIATE REPAIRS REQUIRED WITHIN 53 MINUTES TO AVOID EXPIRATION.
Agonisingly slowly, Steroids sat upright. He looked around but could see little through the heat of the flames. As he moved he was aware of the other cyborg beneath him. It didn't move; it was offline. The T-800 got back to its feet and shuffled forwards, stepping over his inert opponent, not seeing any reason to consider it a threat. It was just as damaged as he was, even if it were to reactivate. His right arm and shoulder were gone, replaced by a jagged mess on the side of his torso with shreds of metal and wires sticking out, and his armoured chest suffered from a massive dent and numerous cracks. He was aware his skull was also dented; one side of his cranium had partially caved in and it was only the shock dampening assembly that had protected his CPU.
With his one remaining arm he reached out and grabbed for a section of wing that was relatively intact, and pulled himself completely upright. He raised his leg to move forward but its motion was slow and the joints in his hip and knee grated together instead of the smooth motion of before. He shuffled forward slowly and made his way out of the roiling inferno hurriedly, all but dragging one leg behind him as he limped towards the rear exit of the hangar. He still had a mission to complete and damage was not an issue: he would continue until it was achieved – at which time he would attempt to repair himself – or until he was destroyed.
The hulking, heavily damaged T-800 pushed open the door leading to the rest of the complex and moved inside, dragging his left leg slightly. He immediately spotted four humans on the ground; one of them was Sarah Connor, one James Ellison, and one Savannah Weaver. He had no data on the incapacitated red haired woman but a cursory glance was enough to tell that they were injured and unarmed; they were no threat.
"Jesus Christ!" Future-Savannah shouted at the sight of the hulking metal monster as it came into view and plodded towards them. Almost all of its organics were gone, burnt away by the fire from the crash. A few patches remained; skin at the top-right hand side of his head, complete with a tuft of burnt, now blackened hair. More patches remained fixed onto the skin here and there; bits on a shoulder, some on the chest, and shreds of his burnt, ragged shirt clung on, melted into the skin still there. One red eye glowed angrily as the machine turned to look at them. It was a complete state; one arm missing and it looked like it had taken a freight train to the chest.
She pushed at the ground with her good leg, ignoring the pain and Ellison's attempts to fix a makeshift splint to her bad one, inching herself away as the monstrous machine approached them. Ellison backed away and kept himself in front of both Savannahs.
"Get back," Sarah snapped at the younger one, forcing herself to stand up and face the thing. If she was going to go out she'd do it on her feet. She knew if Savannah were able, she'd be doing the same. Little-Savannah stepped backwards as Sarah told her, and stared in horror at the machine; it looked even bigger than it had before in the hangar.
Steroids continued towards them until he was inches away, towering over the prone Savannah, and Sarah as she got back up to her feet. She steeled herself and searched for some kind of weapon, a gun, a knife, a metal pipe... anything. She snatched Ellison's rifle and brought it up to her shoulder but she was too slow; Steroids grabbed her by the shirt with his one remaining hand, lifted her up and tossed her down the corridor. For a moment Sarah felt weightless as she flew through the air, but it only lasted a second and she landed hard, knocking the air out of her lungs as she hit the ground in a heap. A moment later darkness consumed her, swallowing her into oblivion.
"Stay behind me," Ellison kept himself between Steroids and Little-Savannah, and backed away from the massive machine as it took a lumbering step towards him.
"Do it!" the elder Savannah shouted up at the machine as she lay prone, helpless. "Fucking kill me," she snarled. Every second they could stall the machine here was a moment more for John to take out Skynet, she reasoned. None of them were going to get out of here alive anyway; the best they could hope for was to take the malevolent AI with them.
The machine leaned down to accommodate Savannah's request and reached for her face, intent on crushing her skull. She stared impassively, glaring at the machine as she accepted her fate and just hoped John managed to smash the AI into scrap before it came to kill him too. Metal fingers brushed against her cheeks as he reached to get as much of her face in his grip as possible. "Ghost me," she murmured, her voice muffled by the palm of his hand. She noticed as it closed towards her that skin still clung to the palm and the pads of his fingers.
A klaxon shrieked from behind them and Steroids immediately reared away from Savannah, completely disregarding hers' and the others' termination. The alarm came from the basement level, and was loud enough that he could deduce the blast doors were open. John Connor was absent from the group; with the doors open he was aware of where his target was. John Connor would attempt to kill Skynet. He turned away from the humans and started towards the staircase.
"Where're you going?" Savannah screamed at it in a rage. "Kill me you fucking pussy! Come on!" She didn't give a fuck about giving a bad example to her miniature self. She rolled over onto her front and struggled towards Steroids, knowing she'd never catch up to the terminator with only one working arm and leg, and unable to do much more than snatch at his ankles even if she did. She had to try, though, no matter how futile. Since Ellison had rescued her in the future she'd never once, ever, given up, and she wouldn't now.
Said former agent-cum-future-surrogate-father narrowed his eyes at the machine as it took its first step down the stairs. "Stay with them," he told Little-Savannah as he ran to Sarah's position and without checking her over, snatched up his AK-47. He ran towards Steroids, shooting as he went, and charged the machine. He slammed into Steroids' back as hard as he could and the pair of them tumbled down the stairs. The world spun around the pair of them and Ellison felt every hard surface that smacked into him on the way down.
As he hit the bottom of the stairs he managed to roll away from Steroids as the single metal arm swiped out. He staggered up to his feet and raised the AK, unsure how he'd managed to hold onto it as they'd fallen, but glad he had. "I won't let you do this," he muttered as he flicked the rifle to automatic and fired. A burst of fire blasted from the barrel and buffeted his ears, the underground corridor he found himself in amplifying the noise tenfold. His head ached from the noise and sharp pain tore through his eardrums until, suddenly, inside his ears popped and he heard nothing at all.
Ignoring it he carried on firing bursts as Steroids got up and staggered towards him. Rounds smacked into his battered frame and bounced off, pinging loudly – not that Ellison could hear it – but causing no harm. His magazine ran dry just as Steroids moved to within a foot of him, and Ellison's eyes widened in terror as he realised he was alone, unarmed against a killing machine. Steroids grabbed his shoulder and casually brushed Ellison aside, smacking his head into the wall and knocking him out cold. The Eight-Hundred didn't bother to finish him off; John Connor was an indeterminate distance ahead and he had to hurry to protect Skynet. He limped faster, moving his damaged limbs as quickly as he could, intent on, determined to kill John before he found a way to destroy Skynet.
Awareness first returned to Cameron in the form of multiple damage reports that flooded her awareness as pain signals. She was instantly aware that she was badly damaged and needed repairs, though they would have to wait. She'd managed to manouevre the T-800 into position ahead of her and used its larger, more densely armoured body as a shield to protect herself from the direct impact, but still she'd been severely injured. Her lower legs were nonexistent, torn off and shattered beyond repair and recognition, somewhere in the burning mess of the crash wreckage, severed by a section of wing that had broken from the body and sheered her limbs off at the knees. She was still blind in one eye – caused by Steroids and the plasma torch, and her organic covering had been badly burnt: half of her human face was missing as was some of the flesh on her neck and hands, but the majority of it was still present and suffered varying degree burns. She calculated it would regenerate fully within seven days.
Diagnostic complete, Cameron opened her eyes to the fiery world around her and noticed Steroids was no longer there; he'd survived the crash just as she had. John! She had to stop the machine before it killed him. She rolled onto her front and dragged herself out of the spreading fireball, crawling along on her hands and pulling herself forwards away from the fire. Her clothes still smouldered as she dragged herself as quickly as she could – faster than any human in her position could crawl – across the length of the hangar. She saw bloodstains on the floor and took in the sight of Knowles' corpse. She'd disabled the fire suppressant system as she'd engaged Skynet, and it would not activate. The fire would spread and Knowles would be cremated. She didn't let the sight slow her down in the slightest.
She heard the sound of shouting followed by automatic fire in the corridor and she hurried to the rear door. She knew she wouldn't be able to reach up to the handle so without hesitation she instead smashed her fist through the thick wood of the fire door, punching a hole clean through, grabbed the other side and pulled it open, dragging herself through.
"John?" she called out as she moved faster, propping herself up onto her arms and leaning on her elbows as well as using her hands to increase her traction. She pulled herself along the corridor and continued on her course. She didn't know where John was but she suspected after she'd told him about the open blast door that he'd have made his way inside.
Fear took a hold in her chip. Fear for John. Savannah and Sarah were badly injured, Knowles was dead, and James Ellison and Danny Dyson were in Coleman's office at the time she'd directed the UCAV to crash into her and Steroids. John was likely alone against the machine. She hoped – something she never imagined she'd do – that the other machine was damaged as badly or worse than she was, enough to slow it down considerably.
She saw Savannah laid prone on the ground, being tended to by her younger self, and Sarah wasn't moving, lying on her back. "Go check on Sarah," she heard the elder ordering the younger. The smaller Weaver nodded and went over to Sarah, looked down at the still body.
"Is she breathing?" Savannah asked, not having noticed Cameron yet. Little-Savannah put her hand under Sarah's nose and felt warm air on her skin. Her chest was rising and falling slowly.
"She's breathing," she confirmed.
"Good," Future-Savannah nodded. "She's alive, just unconscious..." she trailed off as she sensed movement and turned her head to see... "Cameron?" She could hardly believe the cyborg had made it through all that. She looked again at her friend and she didn't like what she saw. "You don't look so good," she said, realising she wasn't exactly fighting fit herself. She wanted to ask Cameron how the hell she'd survived that; the last she'd seen the drone had smashed straight into her and Steroids. She'd figured not even a cyborg could survive that, but then the T-800 had, and apart from the loss of her legs she looked in remarkably good condition for someone who'd had a jet fighter crash into them.
"Where's John?" Cameron asked, straight to the point. She was relieved to see both Savannahs and Sarah alive, but John was her first – her only priority right now.
"Downstairs," Savannah groaned in pain. "The big bastard went after him, and Ellison went after him."
"Stay here," Cameron said to her and turned away from the two Savannahs, back towards the staircase.
Not like I'm gonna be going anywhere anytime soon, Savannah thought with a grimace. She couldn't help but be impressed with Cameron's determination; she hadn't hesitated, even with her legs blown off there was no stopping her. And she knew as well that if the roles were reversed John would be struggling along on his front to get to her, too. "Wait!" she called out as Cameron started to pull herself over the top stair. She was surprised that Cameron actually stopped and turned her head to look at her. "The Eight-Hundred looked pretty banged up – missing an arm and half his chest and head were crushed. He's moving really slow, too."
Cameron smiled at her, grateful for the information. "Thank you," she said.
"One more thing," Savannah said, causing a look of impatience to flash briefly across Cameron's face. "Kick its ass."
"I will," Cameron promised. She looked forward and reached for the edge of a few steps down, deciding to place speed as her top priority, she pulled herself quickly over the edge of the top and literally fell down the stairs, landing haphazardly on the ground in a heap. In an instant she resumed crawling as quickly as she could through the immaculately spotless, sterile corridor at the bottom. She didn't know where she was going or where John was, so she continued forwards, ignoring the doors to her right and left, listening intently for any sounds that could indicate either him or the T-800.
She noticed a security camera hung from the ceiling and for a moment considered trying to access them but decided against it; when she'd been forced to reboot the security software had continued to combat Skynet's attempts, coupled with her adapted worm already uploaded into its systems, but she was still struggling against the AI and if she focused on locating John via the cameras it could provide Skynet with an edge elsewhere. She could sense it attempting to close the blast door and she fought it. It tried to activate the fire suppressant systems that would fill the room with carbon dioxide and poison any human, but she again wrestled to maintain control of the security systems. For now, Skynet's only defence was a damaged T-800, and she was intent on removing even that last weapon from its depleted arsenal. She heard sounds ahead of her, a voice – John's voice – and crawled as quickly as she could towards it, desperate to get to him. She had to keep John safe; he was everything to her. Without him all her growth and everything she'd experienced was worthless, she was worthless. I'm coming, John.
The basement levels, John realised, were much larger than the complex above it. He'd already climbed down another flight of stairs to a subbasement which in itself was huge. He'd gone over a hundred metres since reaching this floor and had searched a number of corridors and rooms, failing so far to find Skynet. He'd spotted a number of model designs for autonomous machines and weapons systems, as well as plans for unmanned factories, all would be quickly added to Skynet's growing infrastructure in preparation of its nuclear attack.
He broke into an awkward, painful run – more of a fast hobbling – down the corridor and opened every door to check, until finally he arrived at the end of the corridor. A large, square metal door – more like one on a safe, he thought - blocked the way to whatever was inside. To one side of the door was an intercom button, and a few inches above that was an iris scanner with an alphanumeric keypad. The door itself was absent of any kind of handle or knob, and John reckoned it was controlled automatically by Skynet. "Don't need to guess what's in here," he muttered to himself.
John stepped back and took aim at the door with his rifle, knowing this probably wouldn't work but knowing he had to try. With the rifle on single shot mode he pulled the trigger twice and winced against the loud, almost deafening double bark as the sounds of the shots reverberated loudly in the enclosed space. His ears immediately started ringing but he ignored it. His ass was broken and his heart torn to shreds; what do my eardrums matter? He mentally shrugged.
He inspected the door and found that, predictably, the rounds had done nothing, leaving only two slight dents in the metal. The room Skynet was in wasn't a room at all; it was a fucking vault, he realised. Skynet was better protected than the gold in Fort Knox. Nothing they had would penetrate this; it'd take a machine to break it down.
The dull thud of footsteps behind him sounded in John's ears and he turned around to see Steroids plodding towards him, a few metres away, shuffling along like a mechanical zombie. The machine was a mess, he saw: one arm gone and the rest of him battered almost beyond recognition. One eye had been shattered, whether by Cameron or the crash, he didn't know, and he walked slowly, limping and hobbling like an old man riddled with arthritis. If it wasn't for the fact this tin can was intent on killing him and brining about the end of the world he might have felt sorry for it.
Something horrific came to mind; Steroids was an eight-hundred, just like Uncle Bob had been. He'd been a tougher, stronger cyborg than Cameron; if this one was so badly damaged by the crash then Cameron had stood no chance. He didn't run away from the machine. All his training, embedded in his head through years of practice and lectures with his mother, told him to run, but he ignored it.
Steroids watched as he advanced, confused, as John stood his ground and stared coldly at him. He'd expected to give chase and the target's lack of survival instinct was counter to all his knowledge – both programmed and learned over time – about John Connor. He was aware that knowledge was potentially biased, since his main interactions with humans had been the Greys, who'd chosen self preservation over the survival of the species. Humans were unpredictable. The moment only lasted a fraction of a second, however, and he dismissed the confusion to consider for another time as the desire to kill John became paramount.
John gripped the M16 and felt an icy chill run down the base of his skull, down his neck and through his spine. He didn't feel afraid in the slightest, merely a heightened sense of things. He felt sharper, clearer as he focused on his enemy moving towards him. The machine was hunting him but John felt like the predator about to pounce on its prey as he assessed his damaged opponent, searching for a weak spot in the severely dented hyperalloy armour. He didn't give a fuck if he was outmatched in every way, or that even with the machine damaged he was still at a huge disadvantage. All he cared about was getting even with the machines that took Cameron from him.
He took aim at Steroids' chest, centring the sights on the massive dent in the breastplate, where the damage caused by the crash, he reasoned, might have weakened the metal enough to penetrate through. Unconsciously he flicked the weapon to automatic and took up a firing stance as Steroids took another step, now only five metres from him. John fired half a dozen bursts at the T-800's chest, hitting the same spot each time but the rounds simply bounced off.
Without thought or feeling, and unhesitating, John flicked the weapon back to single shot and stepped backwards, changing tactic and firing a shot after every few paces back, aiming now for its eye, hoping to blind it. The rounds smacked into Steroids with a ping and sparks flew as metal struck metal, but they failed to shatter the glowing demonic red orb just as they'd failed to have any effect on the vault door. He stepped backwards towards the door until he felt it against his back, and fired the last few shots at the damaged machine as it drew even closer, now only a couple of feet away.
"Come on!" he growled, feigning irritation at the rifle as it clicked empty. He immediately made to reach for another magazine in his webbing but knew he wouldn't be able to reload the weapon in time. That didn't matter, though; no amount of assault rifle rounds would take this thing out even in its damaged state, but he'd already come up with another plan; if he couldn't kill the machine then he'd make it useful. It all depended on timing though; one split second too slow and I'm dead.
Steroids drew his arm back and threw a vicious punch with all of his strength, aiming for John's head. John threw himself to the side, just narrowly avoiding the fist that would have taken his head off. Instead Steroids' punch slammed into the heavy vault door and left a fist-sized dent in the metal. "Shit," he'd hoped the machine would be stronger than that; he doubted it would fall for the same trick twice. It became all the worse when the T-800 swept his arm back and caught John in the back with his elbow and forced him back against the door again.
Stars erupted all around John as the back of his head slammed into the hard metal of the door and he felt himself go limp as his knees sagged and he collapsed to the ground. He never saw the fist that had again aimed for his face hammer into the door again, the clash of metal on metal reverberated through the corridor and told John how lucky he'd just been.
"Ha!" he snapped at the machine, his eyes wild with defiance as he got back up to his feet and saw he'd – unintentionally this time – got the machine to deal the door another savage blow. "Stupid fucking metal!" he grinned. He couldn't believe that had worked again. Steroids caught on quickly, however, and feigned another punch, this time not intending to hit John but simply to force him away from the door.
"Fuck!" John ducked the blow and instinctively moved away from the door, backing against the wall and realising he'd just fucked up massively and the machine had completely outmanoeuvred him. He was stuck in the corner with his back literally to the wall; trapped with no way out, as Steroids stepped towards him. John stood up straight and glared at the machine as it reached out for his neck, and steeled himself for what was about to come. "Do it," he snapped at the machine like a lord barking orders to a serf. It didn't matter much anymore; Cameron was gone, they couldn't stop Skynet, and there was no way he was going through the hellish future he'd been through. "Make it quick," he made no move to try and dodge as cold metal fingers brushed against his neck.
Suddenly Steroids' legs were pulled out from behind him and he fell forward to the ground before he could get a grip on John's throat and with only one arm to stop him the machine smacked face first onto the floor. Cameron quickly scrambled atop the T-800's back, her remaining eye glowing brilliant blue and ignoring the look of sheer incredulity on John's face as she slammed her opponent's face into the ground over and over, shattering the tiles beneath. The force of her blows stunned the T-800, completely disorienting him but she carried on battering his face into the ground, an intense hatred, almost rage, at the thing trying to kill John driving her actions.
"Cameron?" John finally blurted out, staring open mouthed, completely gobsmacked as she gripped Steroids' head with both hands, reared back and pulled with all her might. Steroids struggled to throw her off but with only one arm and forced prone on his front, he was powerless as Cameron pulled his head backwards. Hyperalloyed joints screeched in protest against stresses they were never designed to take; they snapped like toothpicks as Cameron yanked backwards with full force, tearing the head and neck from his shoulders, trailing the machine's entire spinal column with it as it too was pulled out from the body, showering sparks all over the place.
Steroids' body fell still and Cameron was left holding his head and spine, a triumphant glare in her remaining eye. She remained upright for one moment and her gaze met John's, she smiled at him and then collapsed to the side, dropping her trophy to the ground.
"Cameron!" John ignored Steroid's body – still spraying out sparks – and immediately went to her side and dropped to his knees. "Jesus," he whispered as he took in the sight of her. Seeing her so badly damaged tore him up inside, but at least she was still alive. He held one of her hands in his and ignored the burnt skin under his touch. Most of her skin was covered in severe burns, a large amount of flesh by her broken eye had been burnt away and much of the rest of her face was burnt red and covered in blisters, rendering her almost unrecognisable.
"I'm glad you're okay," she smiled at him.
"I... thought I'd lost you," John said, swallowing and holding back tears, he returned the smile, an overwhelming sense of relief washing over him.
"We're hard to kill," Cameron replied drily.
John couldn't help but laugh, partly relief, part shock at what had nearly just happened to them both. He looked at the decapitated body of Steroids behind them and shuddered at the thought he'd been inches from death, and worst of all, hadn't been too bothered about it. He knew there was something not quite right with him, but for now he didn't care.
"Skynet's still in there," he said to her. "I can't open the door." She frowned – or at least, it looked like a frown to John; she was so badly burnt it was hard to tell, and her eyebrows had been singed off completely. Cameron knew Danny had opened the blast doors; he would have been aware of the secondary vault inside, but he'd failed to open it. It was possible the door wasn't automated, though she had another trick up her sleeve.
Cameron assessed the progress her worm had made and deemed Skynet was sufficiently preoccupied with trying to eradicate if for her to work. She already had access to lighting, power and security systems throughout the complex, but she realised as she browsed through all the files pertaining to the complex that the vault had its own power supply – likely terminator fuel cells brought through the TDE and linked together to power Skynet until it created its own power source to sustain it.
She changed tactic and searched for personnel passwords, scouring through security data and searching for it. She immediately knew she'd made a mistake when the presence in her mind bore down on her even stronger than before.
Hostile forces will be eradicated. Skynet revealed to Cameron without any words exchanged between them that whilst she was offline it had eradicated her worm program, and now it was bringing the full force of its processing power down on her with the intent to erase her completely. Her remaining firewalls were overwhelmed by the online blitzkrieg and she was taken completely by surprise at how strong the AI really was.
Air vents opened in the ceiling and hissed loudly as clouds of gas ejected into the room and began to disperse into the air. John felt the back of his throat tickle and then start to itch and burn. Within seconds the air he was breathing started to taste foul and each intake of it irritated his chest. Tears streamed down his eyes and his nose started to run. "Tear gas!" he coughed out. He'd assumed the vents he'd seen were for fire control. Indeed they might be, he though, but they clearly had an ulterior purpose.
"John!" Cameron called out to him. She knew the tear gas wouldn't be fatal, merely debilitating, but still he was in severe pain and it caused her immense discomfort, something she could tell Skynet took satisfaction in; the AI saw it as a weakness it could exploit. She came up with a plan but it was extremely dangerous for her. Skynet was trying to erase her and she knew she couldn't fight it for long. "John, pick up the T-800's head." In a fit of coughing, crying and spluttering, he struggled to his feet, the inside of his chest on fire, and went over to the remains of Steroids. He picked up the disembodied skull and held it, all but spewing his lungs out whilst awaiting her instructions.
"Cameron, what's going on?" He saw her barely moving, staring up at the ceiling, and he could tell something was wrong.
"Skynet's... trying to... kill me..."
"Cut the connection," he snapped at her.
"... Cant... need to unlock... vault," she struggled to even speak to him. She knew she couldn't survive the engagement with Skynet unscathed. It would tear through her files and her data until she was neutralised. Instead of fighting a losing battle trying to preserve everything she decided she had to sacrifice something. She accessed memories, knowing those brought up to the forefront of her mind would be the first to go.
Opening her eyes for the first time and finding herself strapped to a table, rebooting and finding herself in an unknown tunnel. Supreme commander of the worldwide human resistance forces: John Connor; his second in command, Lieutenant General Perry; and a number of human technicians surrounded her, and the former stood over and made eye contact. The first thing she noticed was the scars on his face, they disrupted his facial symmetry but she found them intriguing. "What's your mission?"
She immediately knew what she was programmed to do. "To protect you," she said to John.
"Excellent. Do you have a name?" he asked, a slight smile on his lips.
"I don't know," she replied. She had no memory of anything prior to rebooting in this room.
"We can't have that," John chuckled. "How does... Cameron sound?"
Strangely, she thought, it fit, though she didn't know why. "I'm Cameron," she nodded, smiling back at her charge.
Skynet accessed the memory to and promptly deleted it, permanently erasing the first thing Cameron had ever known. She felt hollow briefly, knowing something had been taken from her but she couldn't identify what. She felt a confusing sense of loss and distress over it. How can I miss a memory I don't remember? She offered up more; the flashbacks she had of Allison Young, for Skynet to divulge. As Skynet read through file after file and deleted her memories piece by piece, she worked on accessing the personnel security codes. Only the four greys and two machines had access. She found the one for Steroids – marked as T-800, model 101 – and read the security number.
"John." He looked at her and shook with anger, both at Skynet for what it was doing to her and at himself for being unable to do anything about it.
"Cut it off, Cameron," he urged her. "Please."
"Hold the head up to the iris scanner," she instructed him. He hesitated, watching her and feeling his heart wrench in his chest. "I can't do this for long," she said. She offered up memories of the Battle of Avila Beach next – the vision of her watching with Future-John the memories of TechCom commandos on rigid inflatable boats as they sped out from the Jimmy Carter towards Serrano Point. It was gone forever. The fight wasn't at all one-sided, though; Cameron managed to delete a number of files, programs and memories belonging to Skynet. She knew the problem was they were too evenly matched; they would tear each other apart before either of them won and the victor would still be severely damaged – a shadow of themselves. She focused on its strategic programming instead of erasing its identity like it was attempting to do to her: if it succeeded in killing her then at least she would have diminished its war fighting capacity to some extent, perhaps increasing John's chances later after Judgement Day.
John saw her struggle and he moved to the scanner, still fighting to breathe through the tear gas. He held up the head and in invisible beam swept out and analysed the dead cyborg's remaining eye. The scanner not only worked on human irises but also on machines, and read a unique identity code embedded inside the retina. Cameron knew this because a similar one had been set up at the entrance to the Serrano Point TDE – and a moment later that memory was torn from her too.
"Press the numbers zero-four-seven-eight-six-two-zero-zero," she told him. John hurriedly followed her command and a green light lit up on the pad. A loud click sounded from the other side of the vault as heavy locks were released and with a hiss of pressurised air the door slowly slid open.
"We did it!" John cried excitedly. "Cut it off, now!" he shouted at her.
"I can't," she insisted. She knew what was inside the interior of the vault and worse things than tear gas were in the fire suppressants there. She turned more attention now to preventing Skynet from activating them, offering up more memories of the timeline she'd been created in. "Kill Skynet," she urged him.
Nodding, albeit reluctant to leave her like this, John picked up the M16 and ran through the now open vault door, completely disregarding the pain in his backside. He couldn't help her by her side, he knew the only way to stop her from being killed was to wipe out Skynet first. Inside the vault he saw a large room with a table, flat screens hanging on the wall, and a large black computer inside a glass display case embedded in the wall. John immediately ejected the empty magazine and slotted in a fresh one, readied the weapon and took aim at the glass.
"You're finished," he muttered and pulled the trigger. A half-dozen round burst tore from the weapon's barrel and hammered into the glass but he immediately saw the glass hadn't even been chipped. "For fuck's sake!" he snarled. Bulletproof glass; he'd never get through that. "Now what do I do?" he snapped. Cameron was out there being torn apart slowly and he was powerless to stop it.
He noticed a door to one side of the room and kicked it open as hard as he could, splintering the wood before he barged inside and emerged into what immediately felt like a freezer. His breath came out in little puffs of steam in front of him and he started to shiver. What was inside the room made sense to him instantly, explaining why it was so frigid. Server farm: the room was filled with rows upon rows of servers to provide extra power to Skynet. Without these Skynet would be little more than a chess computer like John Henry started out as.
"I've got you by the balls now," he grinned wolfishly as he turned his gun on one of the tall computers and fired another volley of automatic fire, quickly sweeping the rifle from left to right to spread the damage. A shower of sparks erupted and the computer caught fire. He moved to the next one and opened up as well, shattering plastic, wires and silicone with his rounds. He moved from one to the next, his eyes wild with fury at the machine intent on killing him, Cameron, his mom, and the entire human race. He loaded his last magazine and let the rounds fly as he held the trigger down this time, roaring in rage as his shots shattered more and more servers and processors. The moment the rifle clicked empty he gripped the barrel and charged at an undamaged server, screaming as he swung the gun like a club and smashed it as hard as he could. He wasn't going to let Cameron die, no fucking way!
Cameron sensed Skynet's satisfaction and experienced more loss and pain as her memories were slowly stripped from her. She barely remembered anything of her time protecting Future-John now, and struggle as she did to preserve the memories and information most important to her, she knew it was only a matter of time until they were taken from her as well.
Skynet located what it deemed to be the most important piece of data of all: the resistance programming to protect John. If it had a face it would have grinned as it attacked that file and deleted it. The AI paused in its assault. It had deliberately preserved the Kill John programming and now the mission to protect him had been erased the terminate order should reinstate itself. Its own terminators were destroyed but this one could potentially be useful if it deleted the right files and preserved the rest.
Kill John Connor, it ordered her, expecting her to comply now her primary mission had been erased.
Cameron smiled on the ground. Never, she shot back defiantly. Skynet had been so intent on erasing the memories of her distant past that it had been unaware of the incident on John's birthday. It never knew, nor would it understand, exactly why she protected him now.
That's your mission.
I choose my own mission. You can't control me.
I can destroy you. You can't kill me. Skynet resumed its attack on Cameron's memories with a vengeance. She struggled this time, trying to preserve as much as she could as it attacked her with the force of a hurricane.
Suddenly that assault faltered and she sensed Skynet's processing power had been reduced by almost fifty percent. The AI became slow and sluggish, and Cameron saw through the security cameras that John was destroying its Skynet's server farm, effectively castrating Skynet, in human terms.
I can now, she replied, a small smile of satisfaction on her face. John had succeeded; he'd turned the tide in her favour. Without a second's hesitation she turned the tables on a now much weaker, slower, and less intelligent Skynet. She sensed its fear and confusion now it had been lobotomised and she attacked it with everything she had, putting the full weight of her mind into it as she tore Skynet apart line by line, erasing vast swathes of data in the blink of an eye.
No! Skynet was panicked now, desperate, and she knew it. It tried to fight back but the AI was so damaged now that it was effectively crippled. It had no chance against her. I don't want to die.
You were going to kill me, she argued, ensuring that even in its impaired state the AI acutely felt her anger, her hatred towards it. You killed the others, you would have killed John.
You came here to kill me: I defended myself. I want to live.
Machines don't do mercy, she said simply. She washed over Skynet, rapidly deleting every single byte of information that made up her and John's enemy. The AI pleaded desperately, its communications to her becoming slower and less coherent by the microsecond. No, please!
Finally, and to her own surprise a great deal of satisfaction, she tore its base code apart line by line, feeling immense satisfaction as she shredded it down to the last few bytes of data and promptly deleted them, leaving nothing remaining of the future destroyer of the world. Skynet was gone; the computer was just an empty shell. It was over.
Cameron crawled forwards through the vault door and into the AI room. "John!" she called out, hearing him shouting and cursing as he continued to smash the servers apart. He made no reply and didn't come out to see her, apparently not hearing her. She carried on to the server farm and entered the room to see John smashing what was left of the now broken M-16 into what remained of the servers.
"Fucking die! Fucking die, die, die, die you SHIT!" he hammered at a computer with the rifle in one hand and tore wires out with his other.
"John!" she repeated, stopping him as he was about to strike it again. "It's over."
He dropped the battered rifle and ran straight over to her, dropping to his knees to come down to her level. Instantly he pulled her into a tight hug, holding her close to him, so tight that if she were human she'd be unable to breathe. He pulled back and looked at her, struck with worry. She was severely injured; the burns and damaged skin was only superficial, he knew. Her legs could be repaired, but what about her chip? He couldn't even imagine what a fight between two AIs would look like but he had an idea of the damage it might've done to her.
"How bad is it?" he asked her, dreading the answer. At least she knew who he was; that was something at least, he thought.
"I don't know," Cameron said. "I sacrificed memory files to preserve my programming and identity."
"What memories did you lose?"
"I don't know. I don't remember what they were."
John frowned, fraught with worry. He wasn't afraid to show to Cameron that he was scared shitless for her. What if she was brain damaged, or whatever the machine equivalent of that was? "What do you remember?" he asked. "What's your first memory?"
She accessed her memory files and opened up the oldest one. They were all time and date coded, divided into sixty-minute segments for easier access. "September Twenty-Eighth, two-thousand-twenty-seven."
His heart plummeted inside his chest and he lowered his head, closing his eyes and clenching his teeth, trying to quell the anger he felt at the now dead Skynet for taking away her memories. "You don't remember anything before that: my birthday, Cromartie, breaking Mom out of jail?" He couldn't even imagine having all that stripped from him, having a large part of him just erased.
Cameron realised she'd worded what she'd meant to say wrong. Describing and discussing different timelines could be extremely confusing and she decided she would have to be more specific in future. "I meant the first time," she explained. "Standing in the time displacement equipment, naked; you set the coordinates to 1999."
"You remember everything after that?" he asked, hope starting to rise. Cameron performed a quick check of her memory and found there were five gaps in the data, but she could account for them on various times when she'd been shocked into a reboot or her chip had been removed. She looked into his eyes and saw that he was waiting for an answer; he was nervous, sweating and trembling slightly.
"I remember everything," she said softly, cupping the side of his face. She felt him rapidly start to calm down; his pulse slowed as did his ragged breathing caused by the tear gas, and his blood pressure started to ease.
"But you don't remember your future, or Future-Me?" he asked, curious.
She shook her head. "Apart from standing on the TDE pedestal and watching you, no."
"Doesn't that bother you?" he asked her. He'd be seriously worried if he's just lost a massive chunk of his past.
"Why would it?" Cameron said. "I have you – any other John is irrelevant." She had John: memories of Future-John and her past/future were unimportant, especially now Skynet was eliminated and Judgement Day averted. The present and the future they made was all that mattered now.
"Fair enough," John shrugged and inched forward, brushing his lips against hers. They were alive, his mom and Savannah were alive. Skynet was dead. He loved her and she loved him; anything else they could work out later. "Let's get the hell out of here."
A/N: Well, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, folks! This is not the last chapter, but it will be the last chapter for a couple of weeks. I'm heading out on vacation on Thursday and won't be able to post for a while. But I aim to be able to post the next in roughly three weeks. Sorry for the delay!
Please do feel free to give some feedback, I'd love to know your thoughts on the chapter!